Notes for Notes

William (Bill) Monson McClellan died in Fort Collins, Colorado on 8 July 2020 at age 86. He was born in Groton, Massachusetts, on 7 January 1934. He received a BA degree in music history in 1956 and an MA in 1961 from Colorado College. He met his wife Jane there and married her in 1955; they went on to have four daughters. He also received an MA in library science from the University of Michigan (1959). He served as music librarian and lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1959–1965. Joe Boonin recounts how Bill was encouraged to apply for his next position.

One of my earliest MLA recollections was the summer meeting of 1963. We were in Detroit—with ALA—and taking a bus for a day's run out to Ann Arbor. I was sitting directly in front of the then head of the U of Illinois music library (Thor Wood) and Bill, who was in a similar position at U of Colorado. Thor was urging Bill to apply for the Illinois job as he, Thor, had just accepted a job as head of the soon to open NYPL for the Performing Arts. Thor's exposition of the U of I music library, its collections, and future was a brilliant exposition and sales pitch. It obviously worked, Bill came east to Urbana and did great things for U of I and MLA.

In describing his visit to campus for his interview, Jean Geil recounts Bill McClellan's introduction to the U of I Music Library as testament to his bravery.

When Bill McClellan interviewed for the position of Music Librarian … the situation in the library could only be described as semi-organized chaos: the noise level was rising; readers were occupying all available chairs as well as three window sills; students were lined up and clamoring for reserve books at the circulation desk; the phone was ringing; and I myself [the assistant music librarian] was trying to calm down an important patron. In short, it was just a typical day at the Music Library. I … tried to extricate myself from the ongoing confusion. When I could finally turn around, Ringer and McClellan were gone! I said to myself, "Oh, no. After what he has seen here, Mr. McClellan will probably never take the job!" However, Bill McClellan was a man of uncommon courage. He accepted the University of Illinois position and ushered the library through the next three decades.

Indeed, McClellan came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as the Head of the Music Library (as it was then named) in 1965 and remained in that role until his retirement in 1997.

While at Illinois, McClellan had the opportunity to design a two-level, 20,000 square foot music library when a new music building was planned, which opened in 1974. The library brought together materials from its former location in Smith Hall, as well as recordings from the Undergraduate Library (where they had been moved upon its opening), and books from the Main Stacks. McClellan recalled that the large windows outside the new library reading room were at first detrimental to avian health, but that it was otherwise a great improvement over the former location in Smith Hall where, in his characteristic wit, he described, "The collection space was filled to overflowing, at a capacity of 100 percent and more, in a warren of closets, cubicles, and hallways … Some of the stack areas were built under a sloping ceiling because the bottom of the balcony for the recital hall was above this area. It probably should have been a requirement for staff and library users of this area to wear hardhats with attached miner's lights."

McClellan was also ultimately responsible for the Music Library's switch from classifying newly received material in the Dewey Decimal Classification to the Library of Congress Classification system, making the Music Library one of the first libraries of the forty or so at the University of Illinois at the time to make the change. Donna Mendro shares that, "Bill was the head at [University of Illinois] when I went there as...